1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus, a printing resuming method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
The printing industry runs a business using a product output by a printing machine, so that it is required to output a product higher in quality than the one output in an office. Particularly in a printing company which handles a large amount of print products related to securities or private information such as the estimate of insurance, direct mail, and the specification of a credit card, if duplication or missing page is found, which causes a significant problem concerning the credibility of business.
In recent years, a demand for variable data print for printing data meeting the needs of each customer has been expanding. In variable data print (VDP), customer data registered in one job are printed in units of records. The record refers to a series of process units of the VDP. For example, if print is performed in units of customers, one record is formed of print data for one customer.
In the variable data print, a large number of records can be contained in one job. For example, several thousand to several ten thousand records can be contained in one job. Furthermore, in a VDP job, a VDP object is associated with each record, combined with a master object as a background and printed. In such a VDP, even if a plurality of records is contained, it is managed in units of jobs, which is referred to as a VDP job.
Such a printing company that uses the VDP mostly subjects output products to an appropriate post processing or classification and delivers the output products to customers. In printing a direct mail, for example, the printed direct mail is stapled, folded, and enclosed in an envelope.
Particularly in the VDP job, data are managed for each customer and in units of records, so that an operator may probably process or enclose output products in units of records.
Up to now, most printing machines mainly used in an office have been handled as a unity of data for each job. In this respect, a conventional printing process is largely different from the VDP. There has been a strong demand for developing a printing machine considering the user-friendliness of an operator who performs process in units of records.
In the VDP, Japanese Patent application Laid-Open No. 2009-75634 discusses a technique for recovering an error on the assumption of process in units of records. In Japanese Patent application Laid-Open No. 2009-75634, a record in which an error has occurred is retreated beforehand to a data retreating area, and process is performed excluding the record in printing. After that, the retreated record is presented to the operator to prompt the operator to correct the error.
The technique discussed in Japanese Patent application Laid-Open No. 2009-75634 is superior to a conventional one in that the user-friendliness of an operator who performs process in units of records in the VDP is considered. Since the record in which an error has occurred is automatically excluded, so that such a problem occurs that the order of final output products becomes different from the order designated by the operator. Since the technique is directed mainly to an error occurring in interpreting the VDP, so that such a problem occurs that the effect of the technique is limited to a printing error such as jam occurring in printing process.
Most printing machines mainly used in an office at present are equipped with an error recovery function to resume printing at a page where a printing error has occurred if a printing error such as jam has occurred. In relation to the error recovery function, Japanese Patent application Laid-Open No. 2005-210754 discusses a technique which determines whether to execute a recovery operation based on whether an interrupted job is the one that uses an inserter.
If a printing error occurs, many pages yet to be output are left in an apparatus, which means that a part of the pages is actually redundantly printed. For this reason, a printing error such as a duplication of page or a missing page may occur depending on a timing at which the printing error occurs or due to work mistake by the operator, before or after the page where the printing error occurs, although the probability of occurrence may be low.
Most conventional printing machines start recovery process at the page where the printing error has occurred. The reliability of the recovery process is generally high enough, which hardly causes the duplication of page or the missing page. However, as described above, since the printing industry is required to output a very high-quality product, the operator is required to check the output products after printing is finished in order to avoid the possibility that the printing error may occur, which burdens the operator with a heavy load.
If a large amount of outputs are printed like the VDP, in particular, it is difficult for the operator to identify a place where an error has occurred from the large amount of outputs after printing is finished, and very difficult to confirm if the duplication of page or the missing page has occurred. Thus, a checking work made after printing is finished burdens the operator with a heavy work load.